Review: AN IDEAL HUSBAND at ARTS Theatre

Reviewed by Ewart Shaw, Thursday 22nd June 2023.

The Adelaide Rep has chosen one of Oscar Wilde’s other plays. An Ideal Husband is delivered with style on the most wonderful set I’ve ever witnessed on the stage of the Arts Theatre. Fortunately, the production is so well done that I didn’t resent the actors standing in front of it. Matthew Chapman’s direction is clean and, while we in 2023 might not grasp every nuance of the class system within which the story plays out, there are lots of laughs and genuine suspense.

Strip away Wilde’s epigrams and this play could have been written by Ibsen, or George Bernard Shaw. A man of political importance is being blackmailed over a serious breach of integrity, which made his first financial fortune and fuelled his ascent toward a cabinet position. He is saved from disgrace by the discovery of the blackmailer’s own past crime.

Stuart Pearce is Sir Robert Chilton in a nicely judged performance. His future lies in the hands of three people. His wife is Lady Gertrude, with the hint that her family line is very aristocratic. Anita Pipprell is slim, elegant, and reserved, but capable of immense emotion when her marriage is under attack. On the other side of Sir Robert is Gertrude’s schoolmate, now known as Mrs Chevely. She’s what was once referred to as an adventuress. Her life in Vienna has equipped her with large amounts of money and a paucity of good nature. She’s a blackmailer, and Angela Short revels in the opportunity to wear some impressive frocks and throw around some of Wilde’s memorable epigrams. The third member of the team is Lord Arthur Goring. He’s in his mid-thirties but likes to pass himself off as younger, and Maxwell Whigham certainly comes across as being the youngest member of the party. He’s the archetypal dandy, with a flower in his buttonhole and a ready quip at the end of his tongue.

While he eventually agrees to marry Chilton’s sister, Mabel, the effervescent Rhoda Sylvester, I’d put money on the character being gay. Had that buttonhole been a green carnation, that would have settled the deal. It’s Goring’s sharp eye and intelligence that will save the day.

Pearce is tall and Whigham is not. This leads to a most audacious moment, that left the audience breathless with laughter.

The role of Goring’s father, the Earl of Caversham, is taken easily by Lindsay Dunn, and Megan Dansie contributes another of what she describes as a ‘doddery old lady,’ as Lady Markby. Brad Martin is two people; the Vicomte de Nanjac, with a very theatrical French accent and, within seconds, drops the accent to become the English, Mr Trafford. Berny Abberdan and Lindy LeCornu, en travesti as the French would say, are butlers, and two well-dressed ladies, Lady Basildon, and Mrs. Marchmont, are Genevieve Venning and Rose Harvey. Director, Chapman, has been clever with these two. As you enter the theatre these two, with Champagne glasses, are standing at stalls level under red light, and they enter the stage as the curtain rises, drawing the audience with them. It’s a very neat device.

Bob Peet’s set design is outstanding. Four different elegant rooms in the Chiltern house reinforce the elegance and luxury of their life. The curtain comes down at the end of the first act, and rises after a brief stay to reveal another striking domestic vision. Peet’s basic structure allows for window inserts to be changed, curtains to be cleared, and furniture to be removed. Richard Parkhill’s lighting shows it off to perfection. It’s so clever, I’d have been happier for the curtain to stay raised and for the immense effort of his stage crew to be recognized and applauded.